Imposing a :30 time limit on 4th ed. players

This posting stems from my previous one, where I highlighted some items bought at Gencon for my game. One of them was a :30 hourglass, which I plan on implementing at my table as a house rule. Each player, on his turn, will have to decide what his action will be in :30 or less. If he goes above that, he will lose his turn for the round. This houserule opened the door to several comments and concerns, and I’d rather address them here, rather than in a generic ‘trinkets from Gencon’ post. Keep in mind, I haven’t had a chance to play since Gencon, so it hasn’t been implemented at the table yet. This is all in my mind right now.

My thinking is the following: Combat is taking too long, due to both the fact that I have 7 players, and the 4th ed. mechanics, which seem to increase the length of combats. If I force the players to act rapidly, I’ll accomplish two things: Speed up play, and create a sense or urgency at the table.

By speeding up play, we can get more accomplished in our sessions. Our time to play is limited to a couple nights a month, and I’d like to make the most of it. Too much time is being wasted by overly tactical players searching through every possible scenario on their turn. Guess what? If this were a real life combat, nobody would have that luxury. Which brings me to the second thing I’d like this to accomplish, creating a sense of urgency. Working with time restraints is always nerve-wracking, and this shouldn’t be any different. What better way to simulate the adrenaline rush of a crazy combat situation than by making the players sweat out their turn and making them think fast on their feet? A combat round is about 6 seconds, so a 10 round combat is about a minute in “game-time”. Make the players feel the rush.

Some comments were questioning whether :30 was enough or not for a player to roll his attacks and damage for multiple enemies, and again, I want to emphasize that the time limit is imposed on the decision making, and not the actual attack and damage rolls. A player should have enough time before his turn to get an idea of what he is going to do when his turn in initiative comes up. Once he decides what his action will be, he’s no longer under the clock. He’s acted and now we are just seeing the resolution of his actions. The clock is reset for the next guy.

I played at a table in Gencon that created a similar sense of urgency. Mike Shea, of the great D&D blog slyflourish.com, ran us through an impromptu game one night. He requires that his players roll both their attack and damage before their turn in the round! By the time he gets to you in initiative, you’ve already rolled both dice, and you are just quickly telling him who you are attacking and what your rolls were. You had to act quick. The table certainly moved fast, and I felt the pressure on me when it was my turn. I want to recreate that feeling without necessarily doing it in that particular way.

So, seeing as how I haven’t done it yet, I’d like to put it out there for discussion. I’d like to know if any DM’s out there are doing something similar, and if any players are playing in a game like this. What’s it like for you? Do you like it? Is it quick? Do you feel the pressure? DM’s, are players responding in a positive way?

I look forward to your comments.

Edit: One of my players suggested that the skipped player acts as if he’s doing an immediate defense (standard action, granting him a +2 to his defenses). It’s not a bad idea, and it will probably be implemented.

I plan on doing this, and I only have a group of 4. I got to play for the first time on Saturday night, and I imposed a similar time-limit for myself – one of my players was DMing and, though we were all playing pre-gens, I found myself very bored when others were taking much longer to figure out what to do.

I agree with Robin Laws – in combat, making the quick decision is better than making the right decision. Ideally, I tried to make the right decision quickly when I played; but things were more fun when combat was cruising along quickly.

One point, though – what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If players only get 30 seconds to make a decision, the DM only gets 30 seconds to make a decision, too. I’d extend this to rules arbitration in combat, too, for what it’s worth – flipping through rule books for the right answer should happen after combat. In combat, the DM’s initial ruling stands with the understanding that the rules as written will supercede that decision as soon as there’s a lull in the action that allows the DM to investigate the rule.

Dude, I manage it with my self-imposed limitation that I’m about to make real. 30 second timers when the first set of monsters’ initiatives come up isn’t all that bad; the next time a monster comes up in initiative order, start the timer again. I’m not saying “DM gets thirty seconds to move all his monsters per turn” or anything – just that you get 30 seconds per initiative order, too.

Again, making the quick decision is more desirable than making the right one. Sometimes monsters fight suboptimally, then when the PCs think they have the baddies beat shit goes crazy and they realize the worst is yet to come.

My players and I actually discussed this tonight, and he loves stuff that makes narrative sense; in his view, the above is very narratively sound. He also values a quicker pace in combat all around.

I’ve seen your DM binder – you can totally make it work. You’re just as prepared as I am when I run.

I’ve tried a 30 second turn limit but it’s still painfully long and I feel dick sometimes doing so. The sand timer puts a lot of pressure on the players and it becomes less fun. Something my dm has tried and I picked up on is to do a loose 10 second turn limit during combat, if all you get are uhm, hrm, should I? or blank stares automatically have them delay their action and tell them they are welcome to jump back in at anytime in the initiative track. This works well with little pressure.

Another method I’ve used is described in the post above which basically fatigues the pcs after a set amount of time in combat. By setting a timer for 30 minutes at the beginning of combat with an automatic loss of healing surge for all pcs at the end of 30 minutes the pcs really pick up the pace. It also feels fair to some of the pcs who may be really on it and ready for their turn but feel like they are being held up by their peers indecision. It encourages quick decision making and team work. Even if the players won’t make optimal decisions at least they will make A decision which is important. Also note that improvised actions and such should be encouraged and if the dm is unable to keep up the time limit should be extended.

One thing I do to help the players and encourage more descriptive combat is whenever they do either a critical, bloody the creature, or just roll really well on their damage roll I ask for a description. I lay down the rules for this as simply: If the description is awesome and amazes me I will allow the damage to be increased by anywhere from 1-3 points of damage. I’ve noticed that even something this simple encourages descriptive combats and improvised actions.

I’ve tried a 30 second house rule this in my monthly Scales of War game. While it DOES speed up combat very much, the problem my group encountered is that it detracts from roleplaying. The players enjoy describing their actions, and this eats into the 30 seconds response time.

I also found that most of our time was spent verifying to see if the interpretation of the powers were correct. I think this will be less of an issue as my players become more experienced.

I think though if you’re doing a Dungeon Delve, or training for the D&D Championships (where you need to complete an encounter in 45 minutes or less) then you should put a 30 second rule. 🙂

What worries me about this is that the game becomes about the timer and not about the action. I just hurry them along (“COME ON, COME ON!” or “You’re hesitating…” or “Going, going… gone!”) or give the bad guys free actions because the character hesitated. Lay down the law at the start of the game and tell them that if they want to be more tactical then play Necromunda or Space Hulk.

You might find that players are asking a lot of questions about the situation and that slows things down. This is either because your up front description was rubbish or they weren’t listening. The character can take time to look around but it won’t get a chance to do anything else. If you find yourself repeating yourself, then move on to the next person.

I like the idea of rewarding the players for quick or cool description (as kaeosdad mentions). I hand out XP for that on the spot. Generally, when players get into the swing of it, they’ll enjoy it more because instead of one fight, they get 10.

The “roll before your actual turn” thing works well when you have an overall time limit on your game. We started at 10:30pm and I didn’t want to take all night so I had people roll ahead. Some people like doing that, some don’t. We allow it at my home game but it isn’t required.

Sometimes you want a more leisurely combat, you don’t always want the pace to be hectic. If you have a lot of players and not a lot of time, however, something needs to be done.

A more “carrot” rather than “stick” approach might be to award +1 tokens for people who have turns under 30 seconds that compound to +2s if they do it consistently. This gives them motivation without requirements. For some (like the controller you played in our pickup game) it can be hard to decide everything you want to do in 30 seconds. I tend to play strikers and defenders and usually have no problem deciding what I am going to do.

Stress how firemen decide the best course of action: they find the first solution that will work and they go with it.

@Marc – The roleplaying shouldn’t be affected because that descriptive “text” that they are laying out is part of their action declaration. As soon as they start declaring an action, the timer stops being an issue. From what I’m reading, the timer is so you don’t dick around for two minutes on your turn before you start declaring what you do. Also, adjudicating the effects of a power are obviously not included in the time limit, as that’s after the declaration of intent.

@All – regarding the DM having the timer. The players only have to track their single characters in combat and can prep their decisions well in advance. The DM has to track all the players as well as all the badguys and any environmental effects and thus doesn’t have time to prep his moves ahead of time. IMO Putting the 30 second limit on the DM is effectively the same as putting a 10 second limit (or shorter) on the players.

That said, I only rarely take more than 10 seconds to declare a critter’s action in a fight as DM, and as a player I make sure I’ve got my maneuvers or intent ready to declare as soon as my turn comes around. I run with a self-imposed limit because my goal as DM is to have the combat run as quickly and “cooly” as possible.

Occasionally I have to violate this limit because I’ve been babysitting the players heavily during the round and have been tracking lots of damage (like when a fireball drops on a large group).

But I know players who don’t do this, who sit and ignore everything that’s going on around them until their turn starts, and then ask for a sit-rep and then go through what they can do at the beginning of each of their rounds – this can easily take 3 minutes each time when everyone else is taking 20 seconds. It bothers me and I understand putting a time limit on them.

I give players a little more time — a minute — to *decide* on their action. That is, they have to be rolling dice within 60 seconds. Their entire turn may take a little longer, but at that point it’s just crunching numbers.

I have one guy who likes to add up his attack one die at a time and then one bonus at a time. Every time. For to-hit and damage. But if your players aren’t like that, putting the time limit on just the decision-making should help a ton.

Frankly, unless half the monsters go immediately before their turn, it shouldn’t take them /any/ time to arrive at a decision. They should have made an initial decision as soon as their last turn was over, and then modified it as things came up. If I can do that as a DM, with the antics of five unpredictable players to account for and half a dozen monsters to run, why can they not manage it with a single character?

I’ve done this in the past when I’ve had indecisive or over tactical players. It worked well for most of the players. However, quite a few would miss several turns in a row. These were the indecisive players or the ones that read a book at the table and only looked up to the board/mat when it was their turn. For the players that pay attention and know their characters it was a hoot!

I may try this at my next game – we’re starting our weekly D&D 4e game night back up in September, and my group is awesome but very ADHD. This might help them focus a little. Might go with 1:00 or 1:30, at least to start.

I personally have a problem with an enforced time limit for my play. I am a very tactically minded player, and a great deal of my enjoyment comes from stratergising during combats. Though I do also enjoy roleplaying, and try to roleplay to my best too.

The problem is, 99% of the time I stick to a 30 second timer without thinking about it, because I pay attention to everything that happens through a combat round and consider how this affects me, I will generally know what I am going to do a full combat round before I do it. However occasionally something happens that throws my plans out of the window, an unexpected monster movement, a status condition hits me or an ally, a critical on an ally, or even a critical on a monster that drops it earlier than anticipated, which if it happens right before my turn means it takes me more than 30 seconds, sometimes up to as long as a minute or two, before I can make a decision as to what actions I want to take.

By giving me a 30 second time limit and saying “times up, you go into delay” in those circumstances could mean that you turn what would be a narrow PC victory into a TPK. Sometimes I need, and I really mean *need* that extra minute or two to plan out a set of actions.

My suggestion would be if you are enforcing a combat timer, that you also give each Player (or even the group as a whole) a number of Time-Outs they can call on play to give them a bit of extra thinking time when they really, really need it.

I’m still concerned about what happens when the second half of someone’s turn is determined by the results of the first half. It’s not a rare occurrence: often a player will decide where he’s going to move after an attack is already resolved, or the target of a secondary attack will be decided after the results of the primary attack are known.

Also the fairness and focus concerns are legitimate. I’m all for quicker combat, but I don’t want to be the DM that forces a player to skip her turn because she couldn’t make up her mind fast enough. That’s not fun for anyone.

It depends on the players really, as while it is preferable to have quick combat and not have the players break the tension by adding up, wanting quick rolls just make the game reminiscent of bingo.

I think it’s because the players have so many options of what to do on your turn. When there are limited options, such as a space battle where the players only have a few things they can do, then it gets faster and more intense.

I did for a while in 3.x. We has a Mystic Theurge who had way too many options (he actually had a spreadsheet and hand made booklet to help keep it straight). The cleric in high levels had a hard time.

Kal Agrim wrote, “By giving me a 30 second time limit and saying ‘times up, you go into delay’ in those circumstances could mean that you turn what would be a narrow PC victory into a TPK.”

Then it becomes a TPK.

If the group’s agreed on speedy combat, and the players can’t keep up with that, then TPK is a potential consequence. I don’t see how this is unreasonable. If the group realizes that players can’t keep up, they’ll have to find another alternative. Maybe they need a new initiative tracking system. Maybe they need to track powers differently. Maybe the DM’s making it too hard. Maybe D&D 4E’s just not for them.

Kal Agrim further wrote, “Sometimes I need, and I really mean *need* that extra minute or two to plan out a set of actions.”

I agree. In that case, the DM should give you an extra minute or two.

The 30-second time limit isn’t an ironclad restriction; it’s a reminder of the importance of time. If a player is struggling because of a sudden and unusual twist, it’s part of the DM’s job to help that player, and give him or her more time if needed.

The point is to decrease the average length of combat; there’s no award for keeping everyone’s turn to under 30 seconds.

xerosided wrote, “I’m still concerned about what happens when the second half of someone’s turn is determined by the results of the first half.”

Time limits are great. As long as nothing is ironclad and oppressive (And, come on, what is ironclad when you play?), they work very well to speed up encounters. I think the sense of urgency mentioned by many is good and adds a certain emotional investment to the combat (you actually feel the stress). Usually, there is a certain type of player who will take 4 minutes to do what he/she could have done in thirty seconds, so this just saves 3.5 minutes per turn. That’s over 12 minutes per round. That quickly turns a 2 hour encounter into a more manageable 45 minutes or so. Cutting down on real world time spent in “grind,” which saps energy and ruins the emotional momentum of the narrative, is priceless. Even tactical players can make up their minds in :30. Obviously, tactical situations can extend that to :60 or even 1:30, but most combat does not require that.

@xerosided – “I’m still concerned about what happens when the second half of someone’s turn is determined by the results of the first half”

Once the initial declaration of intention is made, I stop worrying about the timing. So the second half of the turn, as long as it doesn’t take ridiculously long to figure out, isn’t a big deal.

@Kal Agrim – I do like the idea of timeouts. Especially for higher level play. The other option is to just take a delay until you do get the idea of what you want to do, and jump back in. I would recommend using the Wisdom bonus +1 as the number of timeouts a character gets, or something similar (maybe the Int bonus, since Int is the stat tied to Dex and Dex is used for Initiative?)

@brentnewhall
You said “Then it becomes a TPK”
If that were to become the case, you would more than likely lose me as a player. I would feel victimized because of my play-style. Would you punish a role-player for making a non-combat encounter take an extra minute or two? I highly doubt it, so why punish a tactical player for making a combat encounter take an extra minute or two?

@all
I agree that a sense of urgency is a good thing, and cutting down combat times is important too. My worry, as I just mentioned, is that I personally would feel victimized for my play style if such a timer were enforced unwaveringly.

I know I’m entering this conversation a bit late, but here’s something to think about:

The goal of a time limit is to speed up combat, which is good. However, imposing a time limit can make players feel like they’re being punished, which is bad. So, rather than using negative reinforcement to obtain the goal of faster combat, why not use a positive incentive?

I came with the idea of Battle Chips. Instead of players gaining Action Points, they gain Battle Chips (essentially, partial APs). The faster they complete a combat encounter, the more battle chips they earn. This encourages players to fight quickly without the GM needing to harass them during play (the other players will encourage them to play quickly, anyway).

@dysonlogos: unless you’re just being sarcastic, I think you’ve missed the point. No matter how you implement a time limit (or something similar), there’s the possibility of people bugging other people to play faster. The main point of my approach is to *reward* faster play rather than *punish* slow play. With Battle Chips, if the players play quickly they will end up with more action points than normal, which most players love.

he actually had a spreadsheet and hand made booklet to help keep it straight

I have a printout called “Chroma’s Action List” for my 4E wizard. Helps me remember second wind is an option for standard actions, has all my to-hits and critical hit damage precalculated. Also the list of minor actions — drink potion, activate familiar, use duelist’s dagger daily, use orb of continuance — so I don’t forget and don’t have to think what my options are. It’s a two-page table, but I play faster than anyone else at the table.

I like the :30 second rule. People seem to forget, you not only get your 30 seconds to plot your move, you get all of the time between your turns. If a sudden twist happens that throws off your planned move right before your turn, think fast or hold your action to give yourself time to think.

My players know if they need time to figure something out, they can hold their action.

I don’t think this rule punishes players that pay attention. If the combat is too fast for tactical-minded players to keep up, maybe they should play more tactical games. Not every player is going to fit in with every group’s style.

You’d have to trust your players a lot to allow attack + damage pre-rolls. Personally, I would find it difficult to use a daily power on a roll that I knew wasn’t going to hit… Maybe I’m just a cheating bastard, but I don’t think I’m the only one.

My group has agreed to use a similar rule, and I also ordered a :30 sand timer to track this. However, my timer didn’t arrive before our most recent game session, so I have no actual play experience to report yet. Our rule, to be precise, is that if you don’t announce your PC’s action within :30 of the DM (me) announcing that it’s your turn, your character’s action defaults to “delay.”

We tried the 30s rule and it didn’t work becuase some players are very casual, so each week its like they are relearning their characters, and then other players read the PHB daily and they get impatient when the slowbies are “holding them up”. the timer creates tension, yes.. but not the good kind.

Instead, what we have done is set up a timer for the players. The player timer is for each complete initiative round – 2 minutes per player. We have six players, so every 12 minutes the timer goes off. Everyone looses a healing surge due to “battle weariness” when that bell rings. Of course, we stop the clock while it is my turn.

I’ve also considered adding a diminishing XP bonus system where players get a 100% bonus to XP for the encounter, but the bonus drops 3% per minute of combat – thus any battle lasting longer than 33 minutes gets no bonus.

@jonathan: hey cool! I came up with a similar idea, but after playing with it for awhile 2 minutes per player is just to short and hectic. I’d recommend for a balanced encounter making the timer set at 30 minutes for 5 players(6 minutes per player). If it’s easy make it 4 and harder 8 minutes. I playtested this a few times and it works well. The players were motivated as they were all in the same boat the healing surge loss became acceptable to them as it encouraged the slower players to keep up with the faster ones.

As for the diminishing xp bonus don’t. At least not in a losing bonus xp per minute sort of way, it’ll just bum the players out. I’ve tried a few methods in regards to bonus xp and I think the best method is to give them a bonus if they overcame insane odds or bypassed a situation with cleverness or ingenuity. This will have a sort of meta effect if you let your players know exactly what types of actions rewards what types of bonuses. But the worst thing to do is to penalize, even a bonus xp reward, it ends up with the same effect as negative reinforcement.

Another good type of bonus xp reward in combat is the role playing bonus, which is any player who does not break character and meta game gets a bonus reward(5%). This is something to do with players that are hardcore into acting, but not something to force upon casual players so the reward isn’t that great but it’s there.

Oh I almost forgot….

One last thing, this is something that I’ve tried and it balances out the healing surge loss for everyone, but when the timer runs out in addition to losing a healing surge ever player immediately gets an action point that they must use during their next turn. Sort of a momentum bonus. I thought about cutting down the enemies hp by a quarter since the players are losing a healing surge, but felt not only was that unrealistic but kinda lame. The instant action point however at least gives the players a chance to even out the playing field, so they could potentially cut down a quarters worth of enemy hp but they could also use that extra action point to do some cool stunt… or they coul bail haha!

My DM uses a single timer for the entire initiative round. Anyone at the bottom of the order who hasn’t completed declaring their actions by the time the time is up, loses the rest of their turn. Any time left over is saved as “bonus time” for the next round. this isn’t enforced for every combat, however. usually just when we are in an especially hectic situation.

We use a combination of the battle chip and timer system. The timer is 1 minute and we haven’t had an issue with anyone beinf unable to declare their actions in that time (if they did, they jsut fall to 1 point behind the next actor int he initiative order). If they get their turn completed in a minute they get a chip that they can bank to eventually buy back encounter powers, healing surges and dailys, etc. We got three fights in a single night, which is excellent for us (about 2.5-3 hrs gaming time.)